


Most Important Inheritance

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Control, Dominion Jewel, F/M, Family, Father and Son, Gen, Inheritance, Magic, power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 11:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20114140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Jon shows Roald his most important inheritance.





	Most Important Inheritance

Most Important Inheritance 

Jon, sitting in his study, hunched over the mesmerizing blue depths of the Dominion Jewel cupped between his palms. In its shimmering surface, he saw his own memories reflected as if he were scrying into his past, and maybe that was another as yet unknown power the Dominion Jewel afforded a contemplative monarch…

(It was in this same study that he had first told Roald and Kally, each balanced on one knee, the story of how the Dominion Jewel came to be in his possession. Both of them had stared up at him as he described in glorious detail Alanna’s heroics in obtaining the Dominion Jewel with the wide ocean eyes that had been their inheritance from him, looking so similar he could have imagined they were twins if he hadn’t been present at their births to know a year separated them. 

Only Kally had interrupted his tale with eager questions about the Dominion Jewel’s power. Roald had remained silent—almost disturbingly serious for a boy not yet seven—until Jon finished with what he hoped was a happy ending befitting a bedtime story. 

It was then Roald had asked with the quiet sensitivity that sometimes stunned Jon, “Why didn’t Mama take the Jewel from Alanna, Papa? She could’ve ended Sarain’s civil war with it.” 

“That’s a question you’ll have to ask your mama.” Jon had brushed a kiss through his son’s black hair to make up for his inability to offer a satisfying reply. “She’ll have to answer that, not me.” 

“What will I have to answer?” Thayet, who had an uncanny knack for materializing whenever he spoke of her even if she hadn’t a drop of magical blood in her veins, had appeared in the doorway. 

“Roald was wondering why you didn’t take the Dominion Jewel from Alanna to end the civil war in Sarain,” Jon had explained when his son hadn’t. 

“I don’t have magic like you and your papa, Roald. The Dominion Jewel wouldn’t have been powerful enough for me to end the civil war in Sarain.” Thayet had crossed the room to ruffle Roald’s hair. “Now it’s time for you and your sister to go to sleep if your father’s story hasn’t put nightmares into your heads.”) 

“Keep staring into the Jewel like that and you’ll give your forehead wrinkles.” Thayet’s wry voice made Jon start at the reminder there was another person sharing his study with him in the present as he regarded the Jewel Alanna had given to him so long ago. 

“Very stately wrinkles suiting the gravitas I strive to cultivate as king.” Jon cracked a smile that felt like breaking a brittle egg shell. “I’m thinking of Roald.” 

Roald was no longer a little boy or a boy at all now. He was eighteen and newly knighted this Midwinter after passing his Ordeal on the longest night of the year. Jon had never been so proud and so sad as when the heir he had tried to raise to be a better version of himself had knelt before him to be knighted for it was then he had realized with a ripping heart that Roald was a man who could never go back to being a boy. 

“Ah.” Thayet slipped behind him to slink her arms about his shoulders. “I always stare into mysterious magical objects when I think of our eldest son. They remind me of him.” 

Thayet was being sarcastic, but Jon was utterly earnest as he responded, “He’s a mystery to me.” 

Roald, Jon often thought, should have been an easy son to love and to understand. Respectful and dutiful from the moment he could talk, he should have been any parent’s dream, but somehow, paradoxically, those qualities that made him a parent’s dream also made him remote—difficult to truly understand and even love. Those traits were the constant, cutting reminders that Roald was a diplomat and a rule-follower, two things Jon and his wife would never be. He and Thayet had raised a son as heir to them so different to themselves that it sometimes dizzied Jon. 

“There’s this distance between him and me I can’t close.” Jon amplified his initial remark when his wife remained quiet, his hands tightening around the Dominion Jewel. “I can’t understand him.” 

“Nor can I completely.” Thayet’s murmur was soothing in his ear. “I do know that he’s very dutiful, though, and we’re lucky to have him for our heir.” 

“Yes, we couldn’t ask for a better heir.” Jon did believe in his bones that even if Roald was the child he felt least connected to—the one least like him and Thayet—he was still the best one to be his heir and that the gods had chosen wisely when they picked Roald to be his firstborn. Roald had been born and bred to become king after Jon, and Jon had no regrets about his son ruling after him except that he wouldn’t be alive to see the day Roald reigned in Tortall. Taking a deep breath, he asked the question that had been haunting him, “Do you think he’s ready to be shown the Dominion Jewel?” 

Ever since Roald had been tall as Jon’s knee, he had been forbidden to see or touch the Dominion Jewel. The one time a young Roald had attempted to violate this prohibition by sneaking into the study where Jon kept the Dominion Jewel under magical lock and key had been the only occasion Jon had ever laid a hand on any of his six children. He still remembered that moment—shame had burned it into his mind—and wondered if his son also recalled the violence of his reaction. He had, he thought, been more patient with his other children. He’d had to be strict with the child he was raising to rule after him or he wouldn’t be doing his duty by the realm. 

“He’s controlled and serious-minded.” Thayet’s tone was soft. “I think he’s ready, but I lack the magic inherited from you. You’re the one who’s best equipped to judge if he’s ready, my love.” 

“I think he’s ready.” Jon felt as if a heavy weight had settled over his chest, stifling him. 

“Yet you worry he’s not.” Thayet kissed the furrows in his forehead. 

“No, I worry that he is.” Jon tried to relax into his wife’s kisses even if it was the acute awareness of the burden he was passing to his son—the obligation to use the Dominion Jewel wisely and with knowledge that even good deeds done with it could come at a high price of famine—that made his heard feel carved from stone. “I’ll show him the Dominion Jewel tomorrow.” 

The next day as a winter’s short afternoon shadowed into evening, Jon stood in his study with his eldest son. 

“The Dominion Jewel.” Jon lifted the spells that warded his most valuable and dangerous treasure. “It will be your most important inheritance from me.” 

“Except for the realm itself.” Roald’s words were hushed as if he were in some sacred chapel. 

“Yes, save for the dominion to be ruled, the Dominion Jewel is the most important inheritance you’ll have from me.” Jon extended the Jewel forged by the inscrutable Elemental Chitral to his son. “I’ve never let you touch it before, but you may hold it now if you like.” 

Jon could see the flare of longing to touch the Jewel powerful enough to hold a kingdom together through an apocalyptic earthquake blaze in Roald’s blue eyes, and the flicker of his fingers itching to reach for the Jewel. Then his gaze calmed, and his palms locked against his sides like a patrolling sentry’s. “I shouldn’t. Last time I tried to touch the Dominion Jewel you were quite effective at curtailing that impulse, Papa.” 

“You remember that?” Jon had rather been hoping that Roald had forgotten that moment of violent weakness. 

“Of course. That was the point of the lesson, wasn’t it? That I would remember it?” Roald had a disconcerting, dispassionate habit of valuing justice above all else that Jon wasn’t certain he would ever comprehend and that became clear as his son continued, “You’re my father, and you’ve a right to discipline me as you deem fit. You’ve treated me fairly and gently ever since I was little. I’ve no cause to complain of my treatment at your hands, Papa.” 

“I’m glad you feel that way.” Jon supposed he had been granted some strange absolution by Roald informing him there was no need for forgiveness. Trying to restore the conversation to a plane he understood, he pressed, “Are you sure you don’t want to touch the Jewel, son?” 

“Oh, I want to touch it rather too much.” Roald, always so measured in thought and deed, would be wary of any power that could provoke intemperance in himself. “It’s best if I control that desire as you taught me.” 

“That is a wise decision.” Jon returned the Jewel to its cushioned case. “You’ll have to control the Jewel one day, however. You’ll inherit it from me, and through your magic working within it, the realm will prosper. Then you’ll pass it along to your own heir so the realm will prosper during your heir’s reign, and so on through the uncountable generations.” 

Jon didn’t worry about Roald’s magic being strong enough to master the Dominion Jewel. Roald’s magic might have been less powerful than Jon’s but his control over it had always been deft. 

“What happens if one of our descendants is like Giamo the Tyrant who used the Jewel to conquer large swaths of Tortall, Tusaine, and Scanra for the Gallan Empire?” Roald’s arms were folded across his chest—perhaps to prevent himself from stretching them toward the Jewel Jon had just restored to its case. 

“Roald!” Jon exclaimed, horrified at the vision of one of his descendants becoming a mighty tyrant through the power of the Jewel that could, after all, be used for great good or evil in the hands of any true ruler. 

“It’s a hypothetical only, Papa.” Roald made the slight, placating gesture he offered whenever someone took offense at a comment. Jon recalled making similar placating motions toward his own father when he had felt his own father too stuck in the past to appreciate the splendid potential of the future Jon yearned to create. It felt peculiar to be the one appeased by his traditionalist, legalistic son. “Hence the if.” 

“Yes, hence the if.” Jon regained his composure, his lips twisting sardonically. “If your horrible hypothetical comes to pass, son, the Dominion Jewel will remove itself from the service of our line as it ensured it was stolen from Giamo’s heir.” 

“That’ll happen on its time, not ours.” Roald stared out the window at the setting Carthaki blood orange of the sun. “We can’t understand the Jewel’s time any more than we can understand its power because it wasn’t made by our magic. It was forged by an Elemental, another power beyond our understanding.” 

“We know it submits to the will of a natural leader, and in the hands of a good ruler, it can be a powerful force for good.” Jon laced his fingertips together, appraising his son. “Are you telling me you would refrain from using such a powerful force for good because someone else might use it for ill?” 

“I’m telling you I’d prefer to draw on powers I do understand, Papa.” Roald’s eyes locked on Jon’s, and Jon was struck by the will of his heir whom he had to trust would make a better king than him when his soul had departed for the Peaceful Realms. “Powers like diplomacy and the law.” 

“Yes, you do understand those powers very well.” Jon grasped his son’s shoulder and sighed at the tension he felt coiled there. “That’s all to the good, but there may come a dark day when your knowledge of diplomacy or the law is insufficient to save the realm. On that dark day, the Dominion Jewel will be there for you to draw upon to save the kingdom. That’s why it’ll be your most important inheritance from me. Wield it well if you must wield it at all, Roald.” 

“I will, Papa.” Roald gave a single, solemn nod as he made this vow. “Though I’d prefer not to use it at all.”


End file.
